George Mason

George Mason (11 December 1725-7 October 1792) was a Virginian planter, politician, and delegate to the US Constitutional Convention of 1787. Alongside Edmund Randolph and Elbridge Gerry, he refused to sign the US Constitution, and Mason authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which served as a basis for the US Bill of Rights. He died in 1792.

Biography
George Mason was born in Fairfax County, Virginia in 1725, and he came from a wealthy family of planters. He married in 1750, built Gunston Hall, and lived a luxurious life, supervising his lands, family, and slaves. He briefly served in the House of Burgesses and befriended George Washington, and he supported the Patriots when the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775. He prepared the first draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776 and wrote a constitution for the state, and he sat in the House of Delegates, although he claimed that he was too preoccupied with his health and family to serve in the Continental Congress. In 1787, he was one of his state's delegates to the US Constitutional Convention, and he travelled to Philadelphia, his only lengthy trip outside Virginia. He objected to the US Constitution because of the lack of a bill of rights, sought an immediate end to the slave trade, and sought to force tobacco exporters to use more expensive American ships. He failed in his objectives, but his fight for a bill of rights led to fellow Virginian James Madison introducing the US Bill of Rights during the first US Congress in 1789. Mason died in 1792, a year after the Bill of Rights was ratified.